This is not a normal diet book, and I am not a normal diet book author.

I’m not a doctor. Nor am I a nutritionist, psychologist, sports hero, gourmet chef, or any of the other vocations that seem to qualify people to tell you how to lose weight.

I’m an engineer by training, a computer programmer by avocation, and an businessman through lack of alternatives. From grade school in the 1950’s until 1988 I was fat–anywhere from 30 to 80 pounds overweight. This is a diet book by somebody who spent most of his life fat.

The absurdity of my situation finally struck home in 1987. “Look,” I said to myself, “you founded one of the five biggest software companies in the world, Autodesk. You wrote large pieces of AutoCAD, the world standard for computer aided design. You’ve made in excess of fifty million dollars without dropping dead, going crazy, or winding up in jail. You’ve succeeded at some pretty difficult things, and you can’t control your flippin’ weight?”